Goals and Current Situation
The primary driving force for development was the high cost of sales. Moreover, the proposal delivery process was undefined and unclear, and the sales force spent too much time responding and creating sales material for opportunities that were not real or were presented too late to quote. These issues caused multiple challenges, including large scale projects with low hit rates and the production of too many sales proposals that were not qualified or intended to buy. Additionally, the time to prepare good proposals was lengthy, which created high costs despite what the customer decided.

Capabilities Needed
Metso chose CustomerCentric Selling® because there was a proven methodology that could be applied to support a complex solution and service sales. One of the key success factors was CustomerCentric Selling® Europe’s capability to engage Metso’s sales people and provide concrete tools to implement the concept. CustomerCentric Selling® Europe also had a very solid track record in implementing the value-added service philosophy in similar projects.

CustomerCentric Selling® Europe provided the capabilities Metso needed to achieve their goals. CCS® Europe also provided the sales process development in conjunction with Metso Learning & Development, and first conducted a trial program to help senior sales professionals to become more systematic and better understand the customer buying process. This trial program was held in late 2008. The program was aligned to Metso’s new sales process with a number of practical job aids that provided the sales force practical tools for daily customer interaction.

Since 2008, hundreds of Metso sales and customer interface professionals from Europe, Asia Pacific, South and North America have completed the program successfully. The program includes both hands on CustomerCentric Selling® sales training as well as practical sales process simulation in a controlled environment.

“We soon realized that the partner we needed to choose to support us in this transition must have a strong methodology, global delivery capability and experience in working with the manufacturing industry. After a few pilot trials, we chose Customer Centric Selling® Europe to become our partner, whom we have successfully been working with for over three years. By committing all the frontline sales reps and sales managers to this sales process, we have reached an entirely new level of sales discipline.”

–Vice President of Sales & Marketing,
Metso Paper Line

Result
Since the program launch in 2008, the amount of work allocated to respond to unqualified customer quotations has reduced by more than 50 percent, while the sales project hit rate has more than doubled.

This development has enabled the Metso sales force to allocate more face time to solve customers’ daily business problems at customer locations. Increased sales force efficiency has been achieved through improved internal communication that was possible through the use of concrete sales tools supported by a disciplined sales process.

This progress has also empowered team members of different locations to be able to discuss and develop concrete sales cases and share the same terminology in sales. The sales team’s ability to speak the same language and follow the same discipline through a systematic sales process has resulted in more accurate forecasting and enhanced resource allocation since the quality of information in the sales system has improved dramatically.

Customer Closeup
Metso is made up of a global pool of highly dedicated people working closely together to ensure customers’ success. People with the outstanding expertise, commitment and drive to make profitable advancements, reach new heights in service and deliver real results. Metso’s people around the world are located close to customers, in order to understand the forces that shape their business realities. This empowers them with unique insight to create effective solutions that increases the productivity and environmental quality of customers’ operations. Metso believes that the measure of its worth is in the results delivered to customers. This is why they do not compromise on service and customer offerings. They utilize deep technological competence and industrial knowledge to deliver cutting-edge solutions and services designed to make a real and sustainable difference to business. For more information about Metso, please see: http://www.metso.com/

CustomerCentric Selling® (CCS®) is a proven methodology for predictably improving revenue growth and sales performance. Founded in 2002, CCS® helps clients worldwide to implement repeatable, auditable and scalable sales processes that, when combined with Sales Ready Messaging®, guides marketing and sales to have meaningful conversations with customers and prospects. This results in winning high-value deals, retaining and growing client relationships and improving the predictability and accuracy of sales forecasts.

CustomerCentric Selling® is regularly named to the Top Sales Training Companies list. Clients such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Business Objects, Rockwell Automation, EMC and Raytheon have deployed CCS® worldwide. For more information, visit www.185.56.84.41/~ustomes7 or call Jill Perez at +1.800.993.1228, ext 706.